Anthony J. Garcia finds it both maddening and insulting that any school district would order its students not to read.

As Garcia’s Denver theater company was unveiling the first-ever stage adaptation of “Bless Me, Ultima” last week, the school district in rural Newman, Calif., was becoming the first in the nation to outright ban Rudolfo Anaya’s seminal but oft-challenged 1972 novel.

But after one parent complained that the novel “might undermine the conservative family values in our homes,” it was banned from classroom teaching — a decision Garcia says “advocates ignorance.”

The complaint called the book anti-Catholic, sexually explicit and profane. That and others like it have landed “Bless Me, Ultima” on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 “most challenged” books.

“Usually it’s one parent who has not read the novel,” Anaya said from his home in Albuquerque. “They pick out a few words of strong language, and they make a big deal out of it. But I think we have to be very aware of the censorship that is going on in this country and be vigilant. When something like this happens, communities have to stand up against it.”

(Editor’s note: “Ultima” was briefly “banned” in 2005 by a single superintendant in Norwood, Colo., but he did so without following established review procedures. The book was then considered by an official committee that ordered the book returned to the classroom. So it was never officially banned by the Norwood school district.)

Still, “Bless Me, Ultima” has found a worldwide audience. It was selected for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program, and it’s commonly taught in colleges.

Michael Smedshammer is an English instructor at Modesto (Calif.) Junior College, about 30 miles north of Newman. He works with many of the kids who will no longer be introduced to “Ultima” as part of their high-school curriculum.

“It saddens and embarrasses me to know this is the first school district to actually ban the book from the classroom,” he said. “The Central Valley of California has been described as the Appalachia of the West. It is a poor place, with 11 percent unemployment, and the poverty and ignorance that go along with it.

“Young, Hispanic people here are especially vulnerable, so it was an even greater mistake to remove one of the few books in the school that truly connected with their lives.”

“Bless Me, Ultima” tells the story of 7-year-old Antonio, who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the path of his father and mother — he’s a cowboy, she’s from a family of farmers. Just as many Chicanos struggled to find their place in the United States in the 1970s.

The book offers a third direction, Garcia said — “which includes maintaining the path of our ancestors and using that as a guide for our futures as multi-identity citizens of the U.S.”

Antonio’s Siddhartha-like odyssey is led by his grandmother, who is a curandera, or spiritual healer. He witnesses many deaths; he faces tough questions concerning evil, justice and the nature of God. Ultimately, he is unable to find all the answers he seeks in Catholicism. Instead he embraces a life philosophy that blends all he has learned along the way. And that’s placed the author in the cross hairs of some Catholics.

“I was raised in a Catholic family,” Anaya said, “but when you explore Native-American beliefs and other mythologies and world religions, one has to come away with the sense that it’s much better to pool positive beliefs together; to center a kind of a new faith, as opposed to allowing them to tear you apart believing there is only one way and that you have to stick to a narrow path.

“I have tried to pull paths together and create a new worldview. And I don’t think that’s a threat to those who are Catholic.”

Jennifer Rincon, who is directing the adaptation for El Centro Su Teatro, thinks “Bless Me, Ultima” is just as much the story of Anaya as a younger man, finding how to get his story told. It took Anaya seven years to get the novel published. Complaints included its bilingualism — too much Spanish; Chicano literature did not yet exist as a reliable sales niche; and people didn’t then understand the influence of native traditions on Mexican-Americans.

“Up until then, we had been kept silent and invisible,” said Garcia.

Rincon finds this story of a marginalized culture to be an apt and current metaphor for our larger American culture, one with a conflicted history and many opposing values.

Now, nearly four decades later, comes the first stage adaptation, which afforded Anaya an opportunity to present his story in an entirely different way.

“In many ways, theater allows for an expansion of the book, which may sound strange,” Anaya said. “You lose the narrative quality, but I have put songs in the play. At that time, there was always singing going on . . . but I can’t have that in the book. Well, I can write, ‘They sang,’ but the reader can’t hear it. So that brings a new context, a new ambience, a new dimension.”

That the theatrical adaptation is being birthed now, simultaneous to the California uprising against the novel, strikes a cautionary chord in Garcia. “It is unfortunate that, 37 years (after the book’s publication), there are those who still strive to silence one of our community’s most eloquent voices,” he said.

In the early 1970s, Anaya thought racism had much to do with the backlash. But now that his novel is on the American Library Association’s list of most- challenged books, alongside titles like “A Farewell to Arms” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” he’s not so sure.

“At the beginning, I thought there were school boards that just did not want the presence of Mexican-American literature in the classroom and, sadly,” he said, “we still have racist attitudes in this country.

“But I look at that list, and I see a great deal of books that are considered to be the great literature of the world. So, I think I ended up in an interesting group.”

Rather than banning the book as an immediate knee-jerk reaction, Anaya advocates moderation. “It seems to me the wisest thing is for there to be a community discussion,” he said.

“What some of these people have overlooked is the most important lesson the main character learns — that the smallest bit of good can triumph over evil.”

All you show tune skeptics, you who snicker at the spectacle of unison-dancing cats or roll your eyes at the first chords of “Don’t Rain on My Parade”: Who’s getting the last laugh now? Because suddenly, being in and grooving on and talking about musicals is the hippest thing going.